Hydrogen production from water splitting through an efficient photoelectrochemical route requires photoinduced electron transfer from light harvesters to efficient electrocatalysts. Here, the plasmon-enhanced photoelectrical nanocatalysts (NCs) have been successfully developed by coating a monolayer MoS2 on the Cu1.75 S-Au hetero-nanoparticle for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The plasmonic NCs dramatically improve the HER, leading to 29.5-fold increase of current under 650 nm excitation (1.0 W cm-2 ). These NCs generate an exceptionally high current density of 200 mA cm-2 at overpotential of 182.8 mV with a Tafel slope of 39 mV per decade and excellent stability, which is better than or comparable to the Pt-free catalysts with carbon rod as counter electrode. The enhanced HER performance can be attributed to the significantly improved broad light absorption (400-3000 nm), more efficient charge separation and abundant active edge sites of monolayer MoS2 . The studies may provide a facile strategy for the fabrication of efficient plasmon-enhanced photoelectrical NCs for HER.
Keywords: MoS2; heteronanocrystals; hydrogen evolution reaction; photoelectrocatalysis; plasmon.
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